


Moriarty's Children

by lucifel



Series: Layton/Sherlock WWI Crossover Verse [2]
Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Crossover, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-17
Updated: 2011-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:46:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucifel/pseuds/lucifel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>November, 1918. Professor Hershel Layton walks into a public house and sits down beside Doctor John Watson.  Outside, 4800 people are dead.  Soon, there will be one more.  (Character Deaths are Layton Verse.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moriarty's Children

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a response to a kink-meme prompt and evolved into a Sherlock/Layton crossover when I saw this fanart with Sherlock holding a magnifying glass a la Layton. Unfortunately, I didn't remember till I had finished that one of ACD's own sons died during this particular pandemic. My apologies if that makes this insensitive.

Professor Hershel Layton was weary and cold when he entered the public house, his ancient greatcoat having provided little protection against the icy November rain. The bottoms of his pants were soaked with mud, his hat dripped water onto the tip of his nose, and his rheumatism felt worse than it had in years. He was shaking, shivering, and fully aware of the danger he placed himself in by choosing brandy over a change of dry clothes. If he caught the flu, he could very well die.

Strangely, he found himself undisturbed by this thought.

There were two other men at the bar, one a police constable, the other a well dressed gentleman. They sat a little apart and did not speak. The constable was clearly bracing himself for a patrol, muttering darkly at the barman who listened as if he'd heard it all before. The gentleman, if he were such, alternated between watching the pianist and watching his drink. He did not seem to notice the pianist's eyes straying to him just as frequently. Layton settled onto the seat between them. He felt his bones creak with the movement and almost resented Flora for being sick enough to warrant a stay in hospital.

It had been a long day.

When he opened his mouth to order, Layton sneezed. Immediately, the constable to his right scooted two seats further down and muttered darkly about Spanish Influenza. The barman took a step back and shot him a dirty look, though he took his order politely enough and didn't turn up his nose at Layton's coin. (He couldn't afford to really, not with fear of the pandemic keeping most of his regulars home.) Surprisingly, the gentleman sitting to Layton's left didn't so much as twitch.

He'd heard the sneeze, muttered an entirely reflexive "Bless you." and continued his study of the man at the piano with the dark, Byronic curls.

Layton studied the gentleman.

The man had the yellow stained hands of a doctor. The Doctor was young, two or three decades younger than Layton himself. Around Luke's age. Probably handsome when he wasn't exhausted. A former soldier then. Injured at some point judging by his need for a cane. Much like Layton himself, the Doctor looked ready to collapse of exhaustion.

"London General?" Layton asked when the Doctor noticed him staring.

The Doctor nodded. "How'd you guess?"

"Not a guess. A deduction."

For some reason, this made the man bark a short laugh.

"No, really. Those stains on your fingers - either you wash your hands in Carbolic Acid or you smoke Opium regularly. You haven't the physical symptoms of an opium addict and you didn't move away when I sneezed. Only doctors wash their hands in Carbolic Acid and, being a doctor, you're around enough of the sick and the dead these days not to fear whatever contagion I carry. You're a doctor and we're not that far from South Street. Ergo: a doctor from London General sits beside me."

The Doctor smiled and tried unsuccessfully to hide his smile with a sip of drink. His eyes darted, perhaps unconsciously, once more towards the handsome patrician profile of the musician murdering an unfortunate Rachmaninov concerto. Layton took the opportunity to down his own drink and order another. The brandy here was watered, but cheap.

"Well done." The Doctor acknowledged once Layton's glass sat empty. "Deduce anything else?"

"Only that you were a soldier." It wasn't polite to accuse someone of the sin of the Greeks during a first meeting.

"Well, yes." The Doctor nodded, "But then, most men these days are. Former soldiers I mean."

Layton downed his second drink, ordered a third.

"I was invalided home after Gallipoli." The Doctor offered, sounding half apologetic that he hadn't seen the war through.

Layton almost broke the glass in his hand.

Carefully, he asked, "Gallipoli?"

"Yes. I was with the 29th. Unfortunate business really. I - ." The Doctor caught something in Layton's expression and cut himself off mid sentence. In the ensuing silence, Layton found himself clenching his fist. The young Doctor hesitated in whatever it was he was about to say.

In his mind, Layton saw a bright blue sweater and a happy young boy.

"I say, are you -?"

"Excuse me Doctor," Layton murmured with a tip of his hat, telling himself that he was shaking from the cold and only the cold. That a change of clothes would fix this. "There's somewhere I need to be."

He will tell himself, later, that he did not _flee_.

*

The next morning, the papers were grim. The headlines screamed of morgues overflowing and undertakers running out of coffins. In bold lettering, the headlines expounded upon the many thousands dead in London alone. Layton wished Flora wouldn't make him read them to her, but she insisted through her coughing and so he capitulated to prevent her from exhausting herself. He spared her no details and skipped not a word. He did, however, pretend not to see the small report, buried in the back pages, regarding the demolition of what had once been Gressenheller University's Archeology building.

Flora knew anyway.

She knew because the ward was crowded and the linins weren't quite clean enough and he'd have hired a nurse to care for her at home if they'd had the money. They'd had money before the war.

"We'll be alright." She said when she noticed his worry, "You'll find another position. I'll help once I'm well again. You'll see."

In the hospital bed, Flora looked small and flushed and fragile as a child though she hasn't been one for years. She wore her stubborn expression and it was her stubbornness that gave Layton hope. These days, he lacked her faith in his own omnipotence.

"Rest," he told her when he had to go, "I'll return tomorrow."

He hoped that she didn't see him crying as he left.

*

Outside, it was cold but no longer raining. Layton ran errands until he was exhausted. In the dark of the evening, he considered going home but found himself unwilling to face an empty flat. Instead, he headed for the same public house that he'd gone to the night before where, as he had hoped, the occupants had not changed from the previous night. Though, luckily, the pianist had given up on his classical delusions and now played something the Americans termed 'jazz'. No doubt badly.

"I never used to drink anything stronger than tea." Layton said by way of greeting when he sat down beside the Doctor. "Not until my boy died."

The Doctor, who had once again been studying the pianist, started and then flushed red. Layton wandered what the Doctor had been thinking. Something he judged to be shameful, possibly.

"Yes, I'd... gathered something of the sort from the... abruptness of your departure last night." The Doctor admitted hesitantly. "I take it he... that you lost him at Gallipoli?"

The Professor downed two brandies in quick succession before replying. "Yes." He confirmed, "at Seddulbahir fort. "

"Christ." The Doctor murmered. "Those boys were massacred."

Layton took another shot, then nodded. For a good while, they sat together in silence, the Doctor ordering them both more alcohol.

"My boy, my poor dear boy." Layton said at last. "He wanted to be a mathematician. Wanted to be a Professor like me. Went to Cambridge. Got sent down for brawling. Had to finish his degree at Gressenheller."

The Doctor smiled. "You sound almost proud of that."

"I am. Nothing wrong with Gressenheller. And he was defending a friend in that brawl. A chemist of some sort. Strange boy with a strange name. Something Homes. Shylock? Surelock? Who would name their child Surelock Homes? Probably why he needed defending. Though Luke said he'd taken up boxing when that fight started. Fought back. Probably why it got so bad. Never met that particular friend." Layton shrugged, took another drink. "My Luke was a good boy." He said wistfully.

Sometime during this, the Doctor's eyes had snapped back to the pianist whom he now stared at with no small amount of intensity. Amused, Layton followed his gaze. Today, the man had gone slightly awry, though in a way that someone more salacious might have described as "delectable". He sat with his tie loose and the top button of his shirt undone. On the console piano there sat a tumbler of something golden and from the man's lips there dangled a cigar.

"Handsome fellow," Layton observed. The Doctor absently made a noise of agreement, apparently deep in thought. "You might want to.. uh... _lust_ a little less obviously though."

The Doctor froze like of one Layton's undergrads called out to answer a question he was unprepared for. Layton laughed, loudly. The Professor suspected himself of being drunk.

"Don't worry." He whispered, "confirmed bachelor myself." Which was a lie, but harmless under the circumstances. He hoped.

Layton smiled kindly at the Doctor, who seemed caught between horror and outrage.

For Layton, the world had gone fuzzy and warm. His worry for Flora, his grief for Luke, floated upwards and away from him. He suspected that he would be able to sleep tonight. "Home." He murmured. "I think I shall go home." and rose to do just that.

Left alone at the bar, Doctor John Watson stared after the man until he was interrupted by the pianist. A violinist in actuality, who really did play piano rather poorly.

"A professor." Sherlock told him, "Fallen upon hard times. A recovering alcoholic still drinking his problems away. Boring." Sherlock took the recently vacated seat and studied John closely, "Yet you seemed riveted by him both last night and tonight."

John struggled not to reach out and button up Sherlock's shirt, refrained from straightening the tie. Something in his face seemed to please his flat mate.

"Ah. He accused of you something." Sherlock leaned in close. "In fact, I'd wager he accused you of something dreadful."

"No."

" Yes. "

"Sherlock, that man he -."

Sherlock smirked, "Do you know that the tips of your ears go red when you blush? It's a horrible tell. You should grow your hair longer. Military precision is only -."

"No, Sherlock _no_ , only -."

John's reaction seemed to displease Sherlock, who waved a hand dismissively. "Spare me. Now - I have discovered that constable in question is, indeed, running a protection racket. We can go tell Lestrade that he was, for once, completely correct and wash our hands of this whole bloody _boring_ business."

"Yes, but, Sherlock -." John grabbed for Sherlock's arm as his companion rose to leave.

"Oh, what is it John?"

"That man. You knew his son."

"Did I?"

"Yes, you were at University together. Said his boy was a friend of yours." Something in Sherlock's face shut down.

"Couldn't have been. That wasn't Victor Trevor's father."

"His son got sent down over you."

"Did he? He must have been someone unimportant then. Or else I wouldn't have purged the memory of it." Sherlock shrugged, John frowned. "Can we go now?"

John didn't answer but, rather, stared at him intently.

Forgotten, on the bar, sat Hershel Layton's top hat.

Unseen, just inside the front door, stood Hershel Layton himself, frozen in a cold black rage.

 

*

That night, Miss. Flora Reinhold will die of Spanish Influenza.

The day after, Hershel Layton will interview for a position as an instructor of Mathematics. He will introduce himself as Professor James Moriarty.

~ Fin

**Author's Note:**

> I struggle with tenses so my apologies for awkwardness.


End file.
